That sort of place where you stop
long enough to fill the tank, buy plums,perhaps, and an icecream thing on a stick
while somebody local comesin, leans on the counter, takes a good lookbut does not like what he sees of you,

intangible as menace,
a monotone with a name, as placeit is an aspect of human spirit
(by which shaped), mean, wind-worn. Faceoutwards, over the saltings: with what meritthe bay, wise as contrition, shallow

as their hold on small repute,
good for dragging nets which men are doingthrough channels, disproportionate in the blaze
of hot afternoon’s down-goingto a far fire-hard tide’s riseupon the vague where time is distance?

It could be plainly simple
pleasure, but these have another toneor quality, something aboriginal,
reductive as soil itself – bonemust get close here, finalyet unrefined at all. They endure.

A school, a War Memorial
Hall, the store, neighbourhood of saltand hills. The road goes through to somewhere else.
Not a geologic faultline only scars textures of experience.Defined, plotted; which maps do not speak.

11. 1. 68

Editor's note

Colville: first published in Westerly 3 (October 1968), 33; also in Earthquake Weather and Selected Poems; a town on the Coromandel Peninsula